


With A Faerie Wild And Wary

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Amnesia, Bargaining, Being Lost, Danger, Developing Friendships, Fae & Fairies, Forests, Gen, Happy Ending, Help, Innocence, Joyful, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 21:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4154418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was not wise to venture into the endless forests, nor to search for faeries there. She had never been wise, though, and of the two of them, the faerie and her, perhaps she was not the only one snared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With A Faerie Wild And Wary

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this [image prompt](https://40.media.tumblr.com/a1450afbb7241dbe297720f8181c48c3/tumblr_nlentqCGFr1qzdiqvo10_1280.jpg).

The forests were dark and deep around her. Endless. There was no way out. The leaves had swallowed her footsteps as she passed, and the trees stood silent sentinels, offering no words of guidance to a weary trespasser. She'd been lost for days. Months. Maybe years. It was hard to tell, in this ancient, ageless place, where time had so little meaning. She could no longer quite remember who she'd been, or why she'd come. She only knew that there was no way out. She had realised long since there would be no turning back.

Yet it was not entirely terrible, this one-way journey of hers. There was more than darkness in these woods. There were sights and sounds, phantoms and glories, strange whispers between the trees. The forest was alive. She knew that. She'd been told it, she thought, perhaps many times, whispers of warning and wisdom as old as the forests themselves. "The woods are alive. Be careful, an' you trespass there. The woods are sleeping, but that do nay mean they cannot wake. Don't go there, pretty one. Be careful not to stray."

Well. Too late for that. But they'd not been wrong, she thought. The woods were waking more and more, with every step she took that led her deeper among them. The silence stirred, and shimmered waking in the darkness.

And oh! Oh, there. There was part of it, just ahead. Another sign, another sight, another phantom glory. A rain of light danced between the trees ahead of her. A fall of fire, where sun motes shone even as she watched them. She laughed, startled, and wandered blithely near, holding up her hands to catch them as they fell. Reaching up to hold spun light within her hands. Fireflies. Hadn't she always loved them?

"Careful there. All that glisters is not gold. Don't they teach ye that no more?"

She turned at the voice, tucking her hands back against her chest, yet empty. She blinked, more curious than alarmed, and studied the creature that peered out at her from behind a tree. He studied back, black eyes gleaming in a seamed face, long fingers like twigs curled across the bole that lay between them. A man, she thought. A little man. Or something like one.

Faeries. Didn't they say that too? There were faeries in the woods. It was not wise to seek them out. They were strange things, wild and dangerous. One never knew what a faerie might do.

She took a little step sideways, away from the fall of light, the better to peer at him around the tree. He shied back a little first, eyeing her askance for a moment, before he seemed to think he ought to be polite. He came forward instead, climbing across a root with long, spindly limbs, and shoved a thatch of greenish hair away from a nut-brown face as he reached the light. He stopped just away from her, a little out of reach, and crossed thin arms over a thin chest so that he might glare at her more clearly.

She did not laugh at him. She sensed that would not at all be wise. But she wished very dearly to hide a sudden smile. It was just that he was so strange a sight, you see. It was only that he was such a strange and grumpy-looking thing.

"I, ah," she started, shaking her head so that he would not see her expression. "I didn't think it was gold? I thought they were fireflies. I've always loved those. They're like ... pieces of sunlight, broken off to shine at night. I didn't think they were dangerous?"

He blinked, a little quizzical expression stealing across him as he looked at her. He thought her a little strange in the head, she thought. She could see it. He looked at her the way her mother had, all that time ago, when she had murmured daydreams about distant forests, and seemed not to realise the danger of them. 

She had, of course. She'd realised the danger. It just hadn't changed her longing for them. Dreams were worth a little danger, were they not? Did not all wonders come with a price? Were they not worth it after all?

She thought from the look of him, though, that the faerie might see it more her mother's way. He had that same expression, that disbelief at her naivety, that pity for her innocence. His arms came away from his chest, and he wandered nearer to her as though she was not dangerous at all. The laughter bubbled back in her throat for that, little peals of it waiting to be let free. She swallowed them. She'd not be rude. Not here, not to a thing so strange and so dear.

"Shining things will snare ye," he told her gruffly, twitching twiggy fingers towards her arm, like he wanted to touch to drive it home. She leaned over, offered him a bare forearm to rest his fingers on. He flinched, startled, but she only smiled at him, and left her arm where he might take it as he pleased. Softly, after a moment, he did. His fingertips were cool and gentle, and not so woody as they'd appeared. He smelled of moss and spice. She breathed it, and found it greatly pleasing. He smelled of wild and wonderous things.

"Maybe I'm looking to be snared," she offered softly, as he tipped his head to look at her. "Maybe that was my wish, when I lost my self among your trees, and found it again in your company."

He went very still, her little faerie with his black eyes and his wild smell and his twig-like hands. He froze, his grip soft and cool around her wrist, and his dark eyes suddenly hard and gleaming as any wild thing who'd suddenly sensed a danger. She smiled at him then. Not the laugh. She had no wish to be cruel. Only the smile, to show she was not fearful, and had no reason to be.

"... Or might be ye're looking to do the snaring," he ventured quietly, as he watched her. He didn't shy anymore, she noticed. He no more flinched than she. That was the way, with faeries. Never so harmless as they appeared, and never so fearful as they ought to be. "What say ye? Was it a faerie ye'd hoped to catch?"

She shook her head, bringing up her other hand to lay it gently atop his. Not a snare. Not a grip that was meant to hold. Only a touch, to drive it gently home.

"It's dangerous to seek out faeries," she told him, with creases around her eyes and peals of laughter in her throat. "Don't they teach ye that no more?"

He made a sound in his throat, all temper and disgust, and she let the laughter loose. She let it peal out, let it fall about them in a rain of light, and curled his slender hands in hers. He snarled beneath his breath, huff and fire and temper, so strange and grumpy-looking a thing. Such a perfect wonder to find in a waking wood.

"Ye've not the slightest care for danger, have ye?" he growled out, greatly annoyed, but he kept his hands in hers. He coiled his fingers just the same. "A babe in the woods, eh? Innocent as the day ye were born, and no less worrisome for that."

She found her breath, caught her laughter again and stored it back inside her chest. She held him, her eyes bright, and nodded blithe agreement to the charge.

"What say you about it?" she asked him lightly. "Will you snare this innocent for her presumption, good sir, and take her out into the woods where all the dangers lie?" She smiled at him, wide and gentle. "She'd thank you for it. 'Twas hope for something wonderous and terrible that led her to you. A wish to be snared, by something wonderous strange."

There was that pity again. She saw it in him, leavened now by a touch of fear, a wry caution in dark little eyes. There was something very gentle in him, she thought. This spindly creature who'd come to warn of a fall of light that was not gold, and all the shining things that waited to snare her beneath the trees. Yes. He was a gentle thing, for all he was wild and wary too. He smelled right and pleasing to her. He smelled like something good, something that would snare her in good faith and keep her safe beneath the trees, where all her footsteps had been swallowed by the leaves.

"All that glisters is not gold," he murmured thoughtfully, holding her hands as though to weigh them in his own, to gauge the heft and value of them. "Methinks ye're a glistering thing, lass. Shining worse than fireflies. But then ... then I've naught a need for gold, have I?"

She bit her lip. In her chest, something stirred, shimmered waking in the darkness. A furl of light, and wonder, and joy. A love, for this faerie wild and wary, who did not shy regardless. 

"Will you have me, then?" she prompted gaily. 

He weighed it for a moment longer, his seamed face scrunching up in thought, and perhaps a little annoyance still. And then, after that moment, he let out all his breath in a gusty sigh, and took back his hands to push his greenish hair from his face once more.

"Aye," he said, grumpy and aggravated. "At the least, I'll show ye which bits not to go around sticking yer hands into like an addled magpie, aye? We'll sort the rest out after that. Whatever the rest may be. What say ye?"

She put back her shoulders, standing tall and fearless and worrisome, and held out her arm to him in wordless answer. He eyed it like a dead twig hanging from her shoulder, not at all enchanted of her, but gamely held out his own arm in turn and wound it carefully through hers. A maiden and her knight. A maiden and her _faerie_ , however grumpily he might play the part. They stood there in the fall of fire, two wonderous wanderers in the waking woods. She laughed for the joy of it, for the picture it must make, and patted his arm when he glared at her in disgruntled amazement.

It was not wise to wander the old forests, so the saying went. They were deep and dark and endless, and once among them there was no way out. It was not wise to search for faeries. They were wild and dangerous, and inclined to snare those innocents who crossed their path.

It wasn't wise to look for faeries in forests, they said, for then you might _find_ them.

And yet, she thought, as she wandered forth, wasn't that the point?


End file.
